IT RUNS!!! - My 500whp build - Element motor and Moore Performance Twin Scroll Kit! by dexterous

8 minute(s) of a 312 minute read

Well, my suspicions have been confirmed, the motor totally ate its self.

That plug in my post above was from Cyl 1. All the other plugs look good physically and appear to have been igniting well. There was about two gallons of coolant in the crank case as I suspected but the oil in the oil filter seemed to be pretty good. I cut the filter opened and there was no metal inside at all. There was also very little metal in the oil pan which I find interesting. That's at least good news for my oil cooler. Unfortunately, there were bits of valve in my turbo even thought the fans do not look damaged in any way.

After getting all the plugs out and the turbo off I decided to try to crank the motor using a breaker bar. Unfortunately, something is obstructing it so it will only allow the crank to spin about 3/4 of a revolution (I tried in both directions). The motor doesn't make any unusual noises when it spins even thought I kind of expected it to. I put a flashlight in Cyl 1 (the damaged one) and I could see the piston moving like normal. I cant see the valves but everything that I can see looks totally normal.

By the way, I am trying to set something up with Element so that I can be there when they open the motor up because I want to see it for my self. I am shooting for the week of Sept 19th but I have no idea if that will work for them or not (waiting to hear back now).

8-31-2011

Just an quick update here. I am out of town on a previously scheduled work trip so I won't be able to pull the car apart until this Saturday or Sunday. For sure the motor will be out by the end of the weekend so there may be more info by then. Once I have the motor out and on the stand I plan on posting picts of the inlet port, exhaust port and the cam. I wont be separating the heads from the block so we wont have the full story until I get to Element.

As I said previously, I have elected to have Element pull the motor apart with me present on September 23rd so that we can all see first had why it failed. I think its pretty important that I don't compromise any evidence that could tell us why this happened. Who knows, there may be something very valuable to both Phil and the community in general here.

9-4-2011

I am pretty close to making a decision about selling my car. A local guy is considering it and should be ready to let me know by mid week (car will be close to stock when sold). Offers to buy a few of the other major parts appear to also be materializing. This is all pretty interesting since I haven't actually put the car or anything else up for sale yet. Obviously most of you will be fairly bias against moving away from Subaru BUT I think I really need to consider it. That being said, I would like to present you guys with a list of everything that I currently have. Any items missing (there are a few) are already spoken for. Many of these items have under 1000 miles on them and everything is flawless or very close to flawless. If there's something on this list that you would be interested in buying please let me know via PM.

Power:
Hydra Nemesis 2.6 ECU for 2005 and 2006 STI (Wire harness can be easily changed to work with 2004 STI and many other cars)
Apexi AVC-R boost controller
Killer B Motorsport oil pickup
Killer B Motorsport oil pan
Hydramist water/meth Injection (lots of extras)
STi Spec-C Water Tank (for meth)
Top Mount 25 Row Setrab oil cooler w/-10 AN Lines & 200F Mocal Sandwich adapter
Hallman Pro RX MBC
Cobb muffler
Ultimate Racing 1260cc top feed injectors w/Ultimate Racing top feed fuel rails (Top feed injector conversion kit for side feed cars like 05/06 STI)
Aeromotive FPR
Aeromotive A1000 fuel pump
Aeromotive fuel pump controller
Custom AN & PTFE fuel system for an advanced race & track applications (Should fit any GD Impreza)
JDM TGV deletes for side feed injectors
GrimmSpeed phenolic Spacers
Element Tuning competition breather can
Mishimoto racing radiator w/Mishimoto shroud & fans
Exedy twin disk racing clutch (dual six pucks)

Suspension:
Ohlins Flag Coilovers (All Ohlins items sold as a set)
Ohlins 6k Springs
Ohlins 8k Springs
Ohlins 10k Springs
Ohlins Front Camber Plates
Ohlins pillow ball rear top Hats
STI Pink Pillow Ball Trailing Links
Whiteline ALK
Whiteline Bump Steer/Rollcenter Kit
Whiteline Subframe Lock Bolts
Cobb F&R Sway Bars
Cobb Endlinks
Cobb Adjustable Rear Swaybar Mount
STI Group-N Motor Mounts
STI Group-N Transmission Mount
STI Group-N Pitch Stop Mount
Mach V Ti Shim plates for Brembo pads and 5x114 wheel bearings
R&R Ferodo DS2500 pads for Brembos (100% new, never even taken out of the box)

Misc:
Sparco Evo XL Racing Seat
Defi Gauges - 60mm BF Amber (Wil split)
Controller Unit
Boost
EGT (only 300 miles on the sensor)
Oil Pressure
Oil Temp
Fuel Pressure
Defi Clock Gauge Pod
Tripple A Piller Gauge pod for 60mm gauges


As I said, the decision has not been made yet but this is the way I am leaning. Should anybody be interested I am willing to sell the car for $17k without a motor (Near stock) or $21k (very firm on the $21k) with a motor. I would give a deep discount to a local who also wanted to pick up some of the parts if interested. If you research you will find that this is a pretty good price for a 05 STi with 25k miles in flawless condition.

The two vendors involved (Moore and Element) have both offered assistance. To begin with, Phil drove me half way across DC to rent a truck to get the car home along with a ton of other much needed assistance the day it blew up. He also offered to "help me" on getting the motor fixed. Phil hasn't made any formal offers of assistance because we have no idea what failed or why but I am sure he will be there for me. Trust me, Phil is a 100% stand up honest guy. I researched Element a whole lot before I decided to get one of their motors and I don't recall ever reading about a failure in a non-race car (true caged race cars that get rebuilt all the time dont count). Even with this experience I still think they are one of the best Subaru engine builders that we have access to in North America.

Moore Performance has also offered support in many different ways including cost on parts, etc, just read their posts here and you will see.

Here's a car/motor update:

Molly (my wife) helped me pull the motor out while our daughter took her afternoon nap today. Once we got the motor out I took the intake manifold, header, oil pan, and both cam covers off. As I had suspected, header was full of coolant and small metal fragments (slivers). I also discovered that the timing belt tensioner failed causing the belt to skip which most likely bent every valve on both heads. A leak-down test on the three cylinders with closed valves indicates extreme leakage out of the intake valves (cam lobe was not touching the bucket at all).

I am pretty sure that the dead tensioner is actually a symptom NOT the root cause due to what I also discovered. The reason why the motor will not turn over is related to the intake cam on the passenger side of the motor. That cam stops moving at one point and just wont go any further. That cam is about 90 degrees off timing so I assume that the smashed valves are causing it to hang up. I got the smashed spark plug out of that side so I guess it make sense.

I was extremely surprised when I pulled the oil pan off to discover that everything looked perfectly normal in the crank case. I spent about 20 minutes studying everything I could see while moving the motor back and forth and I saw no damage of any kind. I was expecting total carnage in there so I guess this is slightly positive. I also saw nothing out of the ordinary under the cam covers but I really wasn't expecting to see anything out of place.

At this point I suspect that I will only be able to salvage the cams but who knows.